


not what ships are for

by elumish



Series: the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Teen Wolf (TV), The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Atlantis, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 00:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15376659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: Atlantis is amazing. The puddle jumper, less so.





	not what ships are for

Jonathan gets the call at 0930.

He has the vague thought of not bothering to pick up his phone, but it could be Stiles, so he rolls over from where he’s been staring at the ceiling above his bed and picks it up off his nightstand, checking the caller ID.

_ Home _ , it reads, and he swallows.

Sitting up, he answers the call. “O’Neill.”

“It’s Sam,” Carter’s voice says, and Jonathan closes his eyes. He doesn’t still love her, no more than he still loves Sara, but it hurts, sometimes. “I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but we need your help.”

“What’s up?”

Carter hesitates, then says, “This line isn’t secure enough for me to brief you on it. I’m going to need you to come in, if you’re willing to get involved. And you’re going to need your Guide.”

Shit. “You need me out of the country?”

“Something like that.” The door opens in her office, and somebody stops in the doorway. “You’ll be briefed when you get here, both of you. Once you’ve cleared it with your Guide, we can transport both of you out here. It’s not an imminent threat, but time is a factor here.”

Not life-threatening, then, at least not at the moment. “I’ll call him and then get back to you.”

“Thank you.”

Jonathan takes a minute to let out a slow breath and get his shit together before getting out of bed and pulling a pair of sweatpants on over his boxers. Calling Stiles when he’s mostly naked always feels…wrong, somehow, like he’s making it sexual when it shouldn’t be.

Stiles answers his phone with a groan and a groggy, “What the fuck?” and—like always, like a drug addict getting his fix—Jonathan relaxes at the sound of his voice, of his heartbeat below it, slow and steady.

“Stiles. Did I wake you?”

“Hngh.” There’s the sound of Stiles rolling over, his sheets rustling and tangling around him. “’s the weekend. I sleep in on weekends. What’s up?”

“Is there any chance you can escape your classes for an undetermined length of time? My…family needs some help, and it’s apparently not the sort of thing I can do alone.”

He hears Stiles sit up and yawn. “I don’t know about an undetermined length of time, but I don’t have anything due until the end of next week, so I could probably manage a week or so if someone can write me a ‘family emergency’ note. Or, alternatively, a ‘Sentinel emergency’ note.”

“We can do that. I’ll be in touch with the logistics for transport, but it should be within an hour or so.” He knows he should get off the phone with Stiles so they can both get things done, but it’s been over a week since he’s talked to Stiles over anything but text, since he’s heard his voice and his heartbeat, and he doesn’t want to let it go. “What do you have due?” It’s early in the semester, early enough that Jonathan hasn’t memorized Stiles’s schedule yet.

“I have my first quiz in Russian, a test for Criminology—and a short paper for my S/G class.”

Jonathan is already midway through shaping the words to offer to help with Russian when the last thing Stiles lists registers in his brain. “You’re taking an S/G class?”

“It’s a basics class,” Stiles says, sounding a little defensive. “I need to know how they teach it, what people are learning.”

Jonathan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do they know who you are?”

Stiles sighs. “I read as unbonded, or unbonded enough, but Blair’s teachings on how to not radiate…me are holding, at least for right now.” He laughs softly. “It’s fucking weird, though. There’s a whole week on Blair and Jim. In fifty years, I wonder if they’ll have a week on me. Stiles Stilinski, second Guide Prime of the US. Currently fucking a whole lot of shit up, but at least his Sentinel seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Stiles Stilinski,” Jonathan rebuts, “progressing Guide rights and changing the world.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll give you a timeline as soon as I can regarding transport. Pack what you need for at least a few days.” Jonathan closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Stiles’s heartbeat, muffled through the phone speakers. “Thank you for doing this. I’ll see you soon.”

\--

Stiles science-teleports with a duffel bag into the concretest of rooms, or what would be the concretest of rooms if there wasn’t a giantass metal barrier across the entirety of one of the walls. He has a feeling it’s retractable, because it looks so unbelievably out of place, but it’s the US military, so who knows.

There’s a noise behind him, and he turns to see Jonathan striding towards him, the same look on his face as he always gets when they see each other after a while apart. He doesn’t do the octopus routine, though, instead just wrapping an arm around Stiles’s shoulders and pressing his nose against the side of Stiles’s head.

“Hey.” Stiles touches a hand to the small of Jonathan’s back. “How’s your dissertation going?”

Jonathan snorts, pulling his face away from Stiles’s head. “Fine. It’s due in a month and a half, so I still have time for some more rounds of rewrites.”

“Jonathan.”

Jonathan stiffens, then turns, pulling Stiles with him, to see Daniel Jackson striding towards them, a smile on his face. “Daniel.”

“It’s good to see you.” Daniel shoves his hands in his pockets. “You as well, Stiles. Thank you for coming.”

Stiles shrugs. “No problem. Well, probably, considering I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“Sorry about that,” a woman’s voice says, and then General Samantha Carter appears out of the office door behind Daniel. “There is very little I can discuss with Jonathan on an unsecured phone line, and even less he can discuss with you.” She gestures at the long table in the middle of the room. “Shall we?”

She ends up at the head of the table, with Daniel on one side of her and Jonathan on the other side. Stiles takes the seat next to Jonathan, leaning his leg against Jonathan’s, and watches as another man appears out of the woodwork to take the seat across from him.

“Colonel Cameron Mitchell,” the man introduces himself as. “You can call me Cam.”

Stiles shoots him an awkward smile. He’s outclassed here, he knows, at least for the next couple decades until he ends up as Guide Prime. “Stiles Stilinski.”

Jonathan looks at General Carter. “What can we do for you, Carter?”

General Carter glances over at Stiles, then says, “We’ve upped your security clearance to match Jonathan’s. Given the situation, anything else wouldn’t be possible. However you will continue to be briefed on information on an as-needed basis. This is one of those cases, and you’ll be provided with a packet containing all necessary information after this meeting, should the two of you agree to help.” She looks at Jonathan. “Two days ago, AR-3 found two Ancient warships during a routine exploratory mission. They have both sustained some damage, and the systems are tied to the ATA gene, meaning that only a select few people have the capability to fly them. Unfortunately—though unsurprisingly—they require a much higher expression of the gene and much greater flight capabilities than most people have. In the Pegasus galaxy, the only person who seems to be capable of flying them is Colonel Sheppard.”

“And there are two.”

“And there are two,” General Carter agrees. “It’s almost certain Jack would be able to fly the other one, but the powers that be are remarkably unwilling to let him galavant off to the Pegasus Galaxy to fly an Ancient warship. Which leaves you.” She glances at Stiles again, before focusing her attention back on Jonathan. “There’s no indication that the Wraith have any knowledge of the ships or the mission, and so it should be safe, but the longer we wait, the less likely it is to stay that way. There’s no reason for this to take longer than a week. What do you say?”

Jonathan looks over at Stiles, who shrugs to hide the way he wants to jump up and down shouting ‘fuck yeah, space.’ “I mean, it’s not like I want to go to class, anyway.”

Jonathan smirks at him, then says. “Sounds like we’re in.” His expression grows serious. “I need him safe, Carter.”

She nods. “AR-1 and 2 will be transporting you to the location. Once there, AR-2 will remain with you and secure the ship. He will be safe.” She waits for Jonathan’s nod before saying, “Both of you report to Dr. Lam to get the necessary shots, and then you’ll ‘gate to Atlantis. We rebuilt Midway, but we’re skipping the quarantine in this case to expedite the process.”

Stiles doesn’t know what most of what she just said is about, but on the other hand, he can find out. Eventually. Instead, he says, “I hate to sound like the college student in the room, but I need something to give my professors for why I’m going to be missing this much class, and forging a doctor’s note isn’t…ideal.”

Colonel Mitchell looks like he wants to laugh, but General Carter just says, “Dr. Lam can submit a note to your university saying you’re needed for a Sentinel emergency.” She glances at Jonathan. “I assume you don’t need a similar note.”

“I just told my dissertation advisor I have some family business, and that I’ll be somewhere with no cell service. Now are we doing this, or what?”

\--

John keeps himself from pacing through many years of training and the knowledge that it would make everyone around him more anxious. Rodney manages no such thing.

“A kid,” he snaps before turning and stalking off in the other direction, hands waving in the air. “A kid and some—some science experiment, and not that cloning isn’t a fascinating subject, but these are  _ Ancient warships _ , is a clone really the best the SGC could manage?”

John is infinitely more concerned about Stiles Stilinski, but he doesn’t particularly want to announce that. Afraid of a kid is not something someone in his position should be, no matter that that kid is stronger than the Guide Prime of the United States and once almost broke everyone’s brain.

Rodney stops pacing when the gate lights up, hurrying over to stand next to John and Teyla and Ronon and Woolsey in their awkward little greeting party. They probably wouldn’t have bothered with this much, except Jonathan O’Neill is the clone of General Jack O’Neill, and Stiles Stilinski  _ matters _ in a way that John will never ever be able to articulate to anyone who isn’t a Sentinel or a Guide.

The kid is their future, and he’s bright and shining and one of the scariest people John has ever met.

The gate opens with a whoosh, and then two men step through it, each with a duffel bag over one shoulder. They’re holding hands.

“I see why you didn’t want us to go through separately,” Stilinski says, sounding a little breathless. “That would have been a hell of a separation.” He looks up at all of them, untangling from Jonathan O’Neill to stride towards them. “I’ve met some of you, but hi.” He looks at John. “Hi again.”

He offers his hand, and for a second they all just stare at it, because he’s a  _ Guide _ , he’s a bonded Guide, and they would have to be insane to shake hands with him. But O’Neill just strides up behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder, and shrugs.

Woolsey recovers first, taking Stilinski’s hand and shaking it briefly. “Richard Woolsey. I’m the head of Atlantis.”

Stilinski’s eyes flick to John, and he mutters, “More or less.” And then a fucking bird—the fucking bird—materializes on his shoulder before taking off towards the ceiling. A few marines look like they want to draw their weapons, but none of them do. “I think my bird wants to go meet your Guide. I’d say let me know if it’s bothering you, but I have no idea how to stop it, so whatever.”

“His Guide?” Rodney demands. John wants to demand the same thing, because how the fuck does this kid know after a couple of seconds when nobody knows, but he can’t get himself to open his mouth.

Stilinski looks over at Rodney, apparently startled, then says, “Never mind. I’m Stiles Stilinski, by the way. Guide, bonded Guide, despite the lack of bonding tattoo, because it’s complicated.” He looks at Ronon. “Nice to see you again, too. You still look…large.”

Jonathan snorts. “Diplomatic of you.”

“Diplomatic is my middle name.” The kid signs the Satedan word for Guide; it’s a little clumsy, but essentially correct, from what John can tell. “Is that right?”

Ronon nods. “Yeah.”

“Great.” The kid beams at him, and it’s like the sun and the goddamn stars, even muted by the fact that it’s directed at Ronon instead of John, and the kid is a fucking menace, he really is. “If I get a chance and you don’t mind, I’m going to pick your brain about this whole spoken plus signed language, because that’s fascinating, it really is, and is it just a Sentinel/Guide thing or is your whole language built around that, because that has some really fascinating implications for language development—”

O’Neill clears his throat, and the kid cuts off mid-babble. “I understand we’re on a timetable?”

“Of course.” Woolsey looks startled, like he got caught up in the kid’s orbit. “Why don’t we proceed to the conference room so the two of you can be briefed. Someone can take your bags to where you’ll be staying.”

“How long is this expected to take?” O’Neill asks as they walk.

“It’s eight hours in a puddle jumper to the warships, and then Rodney estimates at least six hours to make sure you can fly the ship. Coming back will be an estimated two hours if the hyperdrive works.”

“And if it doesn’t?” O’Neill asks.

Rodney sighs, clearly exacerbated. “Then it’ll take longer. This ship is a few thousand years old, I’ll be happy if we can get it here in one piece.”

The kid makes an alarmed noise that makes John want to  _ fix _ things, and this is why he hates the stupid protect-the-Guide instinct. Ronon looks like he wants to give the kid a blanket or something. “Is it a possibility that that won’t happen?”

“Anything is a possibility.”

“Oh boy,” the kid mutters.

O’Neill’s arm curls around the kid’s shoulders, and he pulls him in close as they enter the conference room. Around John, Atlantis hums with contentedness and the thought, I have a friend to play with now. And that, if nothing else, is fucking terrifying.

\--

Atlantis is amazing. The puddle jumper, less so.

It’s more spacious than Stiles had expected, having been in a helicopter once, but it’s still a little bit claustrophobic, and it feels like Atlantis does but...less so. Like Guide, like the hot Colonel’s Guide, but like a severed limb that still manages to be connected to the nervous system.

It’s fucking weird, and Stiles really wants to know how it feels to the hot Colonel, but asking feels weird and invasive and Stiles is working on his self-control, so he keeps his mouth shut.

They’re taking two puddle jumpers, one with AR-1--the hot Colonel’s team--and one with AR-2, and AR-2 is ostensibly their escort, but hot Colonel wanted to give Jonathan a crash course refresher on flying this stuff, so they’re in the AR-1 puddle jumper. 

They go through another gate, out into space, but then it’s just flying through empty space for many hours, which is super boring. Stiles doesn’t do well with boring, so he convinces Ronon to teach him more signing, which somewhat passes the time.

An hour into Jonathan flying the ship--which feels weird, like him touching another Guide, but in a way that Stiles can feel--hot Colonel asks, “Does your Guide have the ATA gene?”

“His Guide has a name,” Stiles calls from the back of the puddle jumper where he’s trying to get his fingers to twist right around the sign for danger. “And can hear you.”

He thinks Jonathan sighs before answering, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” McKay demands, popping up out of his seat. “What if he has it and he touches something important?”

“You could ask me,” Stiles says.

McKay whirls to stare at him. “Do you have the ATA gene?”

“No idea, but hey, I’m a fully-fledged adult, so maybe you can all stop talking around me like I’m seven.”

“Why would we ask you, if you don’t know?”

Stiles lurches to his feet, feeling his anger rise. He stalks towards McKay, ignoring Ronon’s attempts to get somewhat between them. He’s not sure who Ronon is trying to protect, and he doesn’t really care. “Because I’m a fucking human being, that’s why. Because Jonathan doesn’t own me, and he’s not my keeper, and I know more about myself than he does.” He feels something swell in him, pressure and rage, pushing at the inside of his skin, lifting him up like it’s fortifying his bones. “Because I’m the strongest fucking Guide in the world, and I will not be spoken to like a child who doesn’t know himself.”

“Okay.” Jonathan pushes himself between the two of them, shoving Stiles back a couple of steps, and Stiles hadn’t even noticed him getting up from the pilot’s seat. “Okay, take a breath.”

Stiles tries to jerk away, furious at Jonathan for trying to put him in timeout like a five-year-old, but Jonathan is too strong, hands closed around Stiles’s upper arms. “I’m not a child.”

“No, but you are projecting, and there’s only so much I can keep it contained, particularly in a space this small.” One of Jonathan’s hands moves to the back of Stiles’s head, tilting it up so Stiles has to look at him. His face is placid. “Take a breath. If you don’t calm down, this isn’t going to go well for anyone.”

“What’s wrong with--”

“Shut up,” Sheppard snaps. “Not helping, Rodney.”

Stiles clenches his teeth, then forces himself to take a breath, and another one, and he feels himself calming, that swell of rage easing back inside his skin. Once it’s gone, the tension drains out of him, leaving him feeling empty. He sags against Jonathan, feeling like someone just cut the strings holding him upright.

“Sorry.” He drags his free hand across his face. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Do you know what happened?”

Nothing, Stiles wants to say, but now that he can feel that Jonathan isn’t flying the ship anymore, it’s like some itch, some pressure at the back of his skull like a nail, is gone. “You flying this ship is...uncomfortable.”

Jonathan stiffens under him, pulling away to meet Stiles’s eyes. “What do you mean? Is this going to be an issue for the warship?”

“I have no idea, but…” Stiles looks past Jonathan at Sheppard. “I got the feeling you haven’t said anything about this.”

Sheppard stares at him for a long moment, then says, “If it’s an issue, we need to know.”

Not quite the explicit permission Stiles would prefer, but it’s not clear what else he’s going to get, so he says, “As far as I can tell, Atlantis is the equivalent of a bonded Guide, and this ship is an extension of Atlantis. When you were flying the ship, it was like--it was like you were inside another bonded Guide’s shields, which is...it doesn’t hurt, I can work through it, I’m fine, it’s just not great.”

“Do you feel that when I use the Ancient device as a shield replacement?” Jonathan asks.

Stiles shakes his head. “No, that’s...neutral. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s shields. But the puddle jumper feels like an extension of a Guide. it would be like if I spent the next week letting a Sentinel ground exclusively on me, while you were there. It doesn’t hurt, but you wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” Jonathan snaps.

“So the warship?” McKay asks.

Stiles shrugs. “No idea. And if worst comes to worst, we can just keep me away from people for however long it takes.”

McKay looks like he wants to argue, but Sheppard cuts in to say, “I want to see if you have the gene, and with both O’Neill and I on the ship, it’s hard to tell. I’m going to try to pass control of the puddle jumper over to you, when you’re ready. If you can’t feel it, you don’t have the gene. If you can, the ship should know what to do, but just keep flying us straight. There’s literally nothing to hit here, so as long as you don’t panic, we’ll be fine.”

Stiles takes another breath, then nods. “Okay. Yeah.”

Sheppard looks at him. “You ready?”

Stiles nods again. 

For a second, there’s nothing, and then there’s a  _ shift _ , like movement inside his head, and there’s something there, something for him to grab on to, different from where Jonathan sits in his head, and he holds on to it, and he can  _ feel _ the ship, can feel its power and its control and over a dozen other systems, and it’s a lot, it’s too much, so he forces himself to just look at navigation, to keep the rest of it on autopilot as he focuses on moving them straight, however straight works in space.

After a moment, Sheppard nods, and the ship is pulled from his brain like tension being released from a spring. “You have the gene,” he says, “and your control was decent, but it’s not a strong expression. You can fly a puddle jumper, but you couldn’t fly one of the warships.”

“So I’m not special?”

Sheppard glances at him, and it looks like he wants to say something, but then he just turns back to the ship’s screen. Stiles will take that as a no. Which is awesome. He is so rarely not special now, and he severely misses it sometimes. It’s like remembering life pre-Peter Hale, when it was just a little bit easier to breathe.

Shaking that away, Stiles grabs Jonathan’s hand, saying, “We’re going to go cuddle now.” He needs the touch, the guide-level reassurance that Jonathan isn’t--metaphorically--stepping out on him with another guide. He knows that he’s not, know that it’s just that the ship reads in that weird in-between point, but his brain is approximately twelve birds with an attachment disorder and a golden retriever, so he herds Jonathan over to the side, shoves him down onto the super uncomfortable bench thing, and sits on his lap.

Jonathan wraps his arms around Stiles, keeping Stiles upright and pressing Stiles’s face to his shoulder.

Stiles stays there for a long time, letting the hum of the ship become white noise that soothes all the aching parts of his brain, then pushes deliberately through the part of the bond that they almost never use,  _ I almost broke him _ .

Jonathan stiffens, then curls up even more around Stiles and pushes back, much less steadily,  _ You didn’t. _

_ I could have. _

Jonathan’s hand slides up Stiles’s shirt, settling against his ribs.  _ With a gun, I could shoot somebody. You didn’t. _

\--

The ship is fucking massive.

Stiles isn’t really sure what he was expecting--a big jetliner, maybe, or even an aircraft carrier--but it’s like the size of a small city, so big that when they get close all he can see is ship, no ground or sky or anything but metal.

They’re landing at what they’re calling the dry dock, which seems like a bit of a misnomer not only because it presumably can’t be flooded by space or whatever but also because it’s not actually where the ship is. Instead, the ship--or the two ships, actually--is in geosynchronous orbit, and the dry dock is a weird makeshift structure that looks like a cross between a shipping container and an exceedingly ugly prefab.

“Both ships have damaged ground-landing gear,” McKay says as they approach the ground, “and we didn’t want to pull too many puddlejumpers away from Atlantis to use as ferries. So we rigged up a transportation system up to each of them ships.”

“Is it beaming?” Jonathan asks from his position staring out the windshield.

“They’re hooked into the beaming systems of the ships. I managed remote operation of the ships’ beaming.”

“You’ll be with AR-2,” Sheppard says. “All of the navigational data has been put in the ship computer. I’ve flown one of the ships briefly, and even with inputted navigational data it’s like trying to steer a boat. The plan is for you to get it to in geosynchronous orbit over Atlantis, and we’ll figure out landing when we’re both there. It depends on how well the ship stands up to the flight and how comfortable you feel flying it. The ship does have functioning water-landing gear, but with a ship as big and old as this, it might be a rocky landing.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan snorts. “No kidding.”

Things move quickly when they land, and it’s less than half an hour before they’re up in one of the massive ships with the members of AR-2, who all have giant fucking M-16s and call him sir.

“You can stick with Stiles,” Stiles tells the nearest one, whose name he’s pretty sure is Teldy.

She nods, looking like she’s not actually going to call him Stiles, and heads over to one of the doors to stand guard there. They’re in what looks like some sort of control or navigation room, with a main chair facing the window out to space. There are other chair and such, but the one in the middle is intricately decorated and an interesting blue and silver combination.

“It functions like the chair in Antarctica,” a scientist says in a thick German accent. “To conserve power, life support will be restricted to this room and the dozen rooms surrounding it. We will monitor power output and all other things, but we have very limited control outside of navigation.” He looks at Stiles. “You are the Guide, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.” He looks back at Jonathan. “If you will sit in the chair.”

Jonathan sits in the chair, and the whole ship lights up, and Stiles feels it like a hum against his brain. Not Guide, but...something, something old and powerful and like if the Nemeton was a machine.

“Fucking weird,” he says, and by the way everyone looks at him, that was a little louder than he planned. Whoops. 

“Stiles?” Jonathan asks.

“I’m good. I’m going to go--” He waves his hand at at area where nobody is doing anything, then wanders over to it. He’s really tempted to poke at it, see what the different things do, but people are eyeing him suspiciously, and he really doesn’t want to break the spaceship they’re in. In space. Surrounded by the merciless vacuum of space.

Stiles is fine. This isn’t terrifying. He’s not terrified.

Space. Ack. You can’t hit space with a baseball bat.

On the other hand, they’re on a motherfucking spaceship, and that is super cool.

There’s only so much wandering Stiles can do, particularly given that he probably shouldn’t get too far from Jonathan right now, so eventually he sits down in the corner of the room and watches. Which is really boring, and also metal floors hurt, and his butt is halfway to going numb, and he really wishes he could access Twitter from here.

The boredom stays his predominant emotion until they’re about an hour in to the flight, at which point the machine-ancient-hum in his brain gets loud, too loud, it’s too loud, until it feels like it’s louder than his thoughts but also like his thoughts need to get louder to be heard over it like people shouting in a crowd to be heard and making the crowd louder so they need to shout louder.

Stiles ducks his head forward and clasps his hands on the back of his neck, breathing hard, trying to keep it all from spilling out onto the people around him. He could take out everyone on the fucking ship if he loses control, and would not be a good thing to have happen, so he just needs to get his shit together and hold it together until they’re done with this.

There’s a press on his head, and then the feeling of something pecking lightly at his head, and he knows without checking that his bird is there, preening his hair.

“Kid--”

“Please don’t talk to me,” Stiles grits out. If he stops holding on to himself quite so tight, he’s going to take someone down. Can’t anyone else hear how loud it is in here?

“Are you okay?” the woman asks, and she’s closer now, and Stiles really does not need her to be closer. “Do you need me to get O’Neill?”

_ No _ , Stiles thinks, and his bird squawks from on top of his head. The woman steps back. “I’m going to sleep,” Stiles says, then pulls up his knees and rests his head against them and pointedly ignores everything until he falls into a restless sleep.

\--

He wakes to hands on his face, Jonathan’s hands tipping his head back against the wall, careful and gentle and insistant and warm. Stiles opens his eyes to Jonathan’s face and his worry, and Stiles blinks blearily through both of them.

The hum is quiet now.

“Stiles?”

“Are we there yet?” Stiles asks, then swallows, and his throat tastes like blood.

“No,” Jonathan says pointedly, “we took a break when Porter realized you were bleeding from the ears.” He turns Stiles’s head to the side, brushing a thumb under his ear. It comes away red with blood. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was sleeping,” Stiles says, trying to shift enough to be able to rub his eyes with his hand, but Jonathan isn’t obliging enough to get the hint and move out of his way. “What happened?”

“I was going to ask you that.”

Stiles shrugs. “The ship is...loud.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s not like you could make it quieter.” Stiles gestures with his hand. “Move so I can stand, will you?”

Jonathan doesn’t, but he helps Stiles up, bracing him under his elbow. Stiles is sure people are staring at them, but he can’t see them past Jonathan’s body. “We can hold here for as long as you need,” Jonathan tells him. “I contacted Sheppard, they’re holding where they are.”

Stiles shakes his head. “We should just keep going.”

“You were  _ bleeding _ . I can smell your blood, and it is not helping, believe me. Is it like the puddlejumper?”

“No. It’s--” Stiles sticks his thumb in his mouth and starts to chew on it, only to have Jonathan reach up and tug it out of his mouth. Instead, he presses it to his own lips, which are dry and a little cracked. He needs chapstick, Stiles thinks stupidly. “It’s like how Atlantis functions as a Guide, but this ship is older, some previous point in the evolutionary chain from Sentinels and Guides. I think whatever reason you and Sheppard are the only ones who can pilot it is the same reason that I’m the only one who can feel it. Blair might be able to, but that’s academic at this point.”

“What can I do?”

Stiles hesitates, then goes with his instincts and says, “Closer would probably be better.”

Jonathan nods. “Closer we can do.” He turns, presumably to look at one of the scientists, and asks, “Will it screw anything up if he sits on my lap in the chair.”

The German scientist sputters a bit, then says, “I do not know.”

“Great.” Jonathan grins at Stiles. “Let’s try it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Nope.” Jonathan starts tugging him towards the chair. “But I am sure that I’m not going to be able to pilot this ship knowing that you’re suffering and bleeding and I’m not doing anything to stop it.” Jonathan sits down in the chair, pulling Stiles down on top of him. It’s a bit awkward, because the chair has sides and clearly isn’t made for multiple people to sit on top of it. Stiles ends up facing the same direction as Jonathan, his back to Jonathan’s chest, his head tilted so he’s not stuck leaning forward.

It also means his ass is pressed up against Jonathan’s groin, which is...unfortunate.

Stiles’s bird appears again, settling on Jonathan’s head and leaning over to chew on Stiles’s hair, and at this point Stiles isn’t even surprised. Jonathan doesn’t seem to care at all, other than a short laugh, so Stiles doesn’t say anything about it.

“How are our readings?” Jonathan asks.

“No difference at the moment,” the scientist says.

“Tell Sheppard we’re tentatively moving again.” And then Jonathan puts his hands on the arms of the chair, and the chair leans back, Stiles pitching back with it, and the ship starts humming again, and whoa.

Feeling the ship like this, through Jonathan, it’s not like a hum but like knowledge, like standing next to Lydia and knowing that she knows things but multiplied by a million because this ship probably contains more knowledge than has ever existed on earth cumulatively. 

Stiles kind of wants to reach out and poke the ship and ask it stuff, because when else is he going to get to ask stuff to a fucking city-sized semi-sentient ancient ship, but when he gets close he has the sensation of Jonathan knocking his hand away from a button.

He sends a pout back, and Jonathan sends back the grip of a hand on the back of his neck and then a pointed reminder that he’s busy flying a ship.

With a sigh, Stiles settles back against Jonathan and waits.

\--

Stiles smells of Jonathan’s soap and Jonathan’s territory and  _ Stiles _ , and he looks warm and safe and content in Jonathan’s bed. It’s a military Sentinel’s dream, being able to watch over his Guide in his own territory with no threats. This is only the second time that he has managed to have Stiles here, but as with the first time, it settles his nerves in a way that nothing else quite manages. He wouldn’t have gotten Stiles here this time, either, except when they returned to Atlantis Stiles’s shields were entirely shot.

“Are you going to keep staring at me?”

Jonathan smiles at Stiles from the chair he moved to so he could be between Stiles and the door. He needs the knowledge he’s keeping Stiles safe more than he needs touch right now. Stiles’s distress from the problems with his shields aroused Jonathan’s protective instincts, and given that he needs to be able to separate from Stiles soon, he needs to get all of that calmed the fuck down.

“Seriously,” Stiles says, starting to get out of the bed. He meets Jonathan’s eye and sinks back down into it a little. “I’m not going to run away if you go pee or whatever.”

“I know.” He’s quite satisfied at this point that Stiles isn’t going to break the bond. “I like looking at you.”

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again to say, “I’m trying not to be that person because, you know, we had some chats and stuff, but is this a sex thing? I’m not saying it should be, but I kind of need to know where we stand.”

Jonathan’s first instinct is to get annoyed, but Stiles isn’t pushing, and it is a fair question. One that he forces himself to consider seriously, because he owes Stiles that. So he takes a minute and thinks about it, then says, “Not now. It might be in the future.” This is awkward to talk about, but Stiles is his Guide, and God willing they’ll be together for the rest of their lives, and so they have to be able to talk through things. “The knowledge that you are satisfied is...powerful, and watching that would be. Good. Uh. But not now.”

Stiles eyes him for a minute, then sinks back down in the bed even further, pulling the blanket up to his chin. “Okay. Do we get to go back to Sheppard’s weirdass alien Guide city? I want to see if I can talk to it.”

Jonathan frowns at him. “Is Atlantis really Sheppard’s Guide?”

“Yes? I mean, I wasn’t lying about that.”

“I wasn’t--” Jonathan takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as he gets a whiff of pure Stiles. “That was surprise, not disbelief. I trust you.”

“Right.” Stiles curls up under Jonathan’s blankets. “Yeah, I don’t know exactly how it works, but the city is his Guide. My, uh, bird confirmed it. I don’t know. But I would like to talk to it if I can.” He yawns. “Are you going to judge me if I go back to sleep?”

“No.”

Stiles’s eyes close, and Jonathan gets to hear his breathing even and his muscles relax as he goes to sleep in Jonathan’s territory and his bed, safe and secure.

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't end where I was really planning on ending it, but it was just kind of going on and on, so the ending is what it is.


End file.
